Friday, November 19, 2004

Peter Jennings' interview with Bill Clinton was more revealing than I had expected. Of course, there was all the predictable "fluff stuff" associated with the opening of the Clinton Presidential Library, but what was most interesting was when Peter Jennings talked former President Clinton about his impeachment.

President Clinton is still an angry, angry man -- who has constructed a parallel reality where, I think, he has actually deluded himself into believing that he was nothing more than the victim of partisanship. Peter Jennings told Clinton that a survey of historians had ranked him "41st on moral authority."

Clinton became visibly angry, and inveighed against Ken Starr and the historians, even as he insisted that "I don't really care what they think." Jennings disagreed, and then Clinton, pointing at Jennings, says, "You don't want to go there, Peter. You don't want to go there. Not after what you people did and the way you, your network, what you did with Kenneth Starr. The way your people repeated every little sleazy thing he leaked." He doesn't get it -- really. And it's scary.

What was entertaining was to hear Clinton try to justify NOT taking Osama bin Laden from the Sudanese. Here's what he said: "And we did try to get him out of there because, at the time, Sudan was worse than Afghanistan as a harbor for terrorists. But they never offered him to us. At least, I can't find it in any document, talking to any person, and the first time I heard that, I went to an extraordinary amount of trouble to find out if it was true."

But read this, which includes a transcript of a "Hardball" interview where Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Shelby reveals that the Sudanese offered OBL -- and would have assassinated him, if necessary. And see this piece in The Washington Times, which details the four plans to catch bin Laden that Sandy Berger rejected -- and the fact that Clinton himself, in a February 2002 speech, says Sudan offered bin Laden, before telling the 9/11 Commission he "misspoke." Once a fabricator, always a fabricator.

Want a little walk down memory lane on the Clinton record? Check out this excellent summary of the Clinton record from, of all places, the lefties at The Progressive Review.